Interviews

Sonic Riders

GameSpy: Lately the past few Sonic games have been made by Iizuka's team in the United States. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the team making this game?

Yuda: The director was involved in Sonic Advance 1 and 2, and I myself was involved in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, the old-school titles. The rest of the team is fairly new, intentionally bringing new blood into creating something totally now.

GameSpy:Sonic has been very successful in America this generation. I was wondering if you had any insight into why or what people like so much about Sonic?

Yuda: What I believe is that U.S. Sonic fans like about Sonic is that he's carefree, yet he's confident. He himself is a good guy, yet he has his own style and originality and opinions. He's someone that people can look up to and mirror themselves.

He's not easily persuaded by other people's opinions, he has his own and he's really confident. Not to say that he's selfish or anything like that; he has a mind of his own. Once his mind is set on something, he believes in it, and he's not easily persuaded.

GameSpy: Now that we've had Sonic Mega Collection and Sonic Gems Collection, the rare Sonic 2D arcade game has never been released in a home version. Would you consider this as a bonus material?

Yuda: Not for this game.

GameSpy: Is it difficult to work on a series with such a long history? Sonic started in 1991. Is it difficult to keep it fresh, or to not contradict what has gone before?

Yuda: The biggest challenge of working on the Sonic franchise is that there are guidelines and rules to keep in the existing Sonic concept and also the general gameplay, so the biggest challenge is to follow that, yet to find new challenges for the gamers and to offer new types of gameplay.

GameSpy: There have been a ton of new characters over the course of the Sonic franchise. How did you pick the characters for the game? Are there any new ones?

Yuda: There are three new characters. How did I choose them? There's a whole story mode in the game. This is not just a straight-up racing game where you pick up the controller and start racing -- there's a story mode, also, with cutscenes and voiceovers and whatnot. I chose the characters from previous Sonic games that best fit the storyline. There are a total of 17 characters that you will get to play when you clear the game. In the beginning you have seven characters to choose from. As you clear each stage you unlock characters. At the end of the game you eventually have 17 characters you unlock.